If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Clarifications On Poulsbo's Gallium3D Driver

11-02-2009, 10:30 PM

Phoronix: Clarifications On Poulsbo's Gallium3D Driver

Yesterday we reported on a new Linux driver coming for Intel's Poulsbo chipset that is currently notorious on Linux. This graphics processor is found in many Atom-powered netbooks, but its binary driver is a mess...

If it's not Open, it's not interesting as a driver. I'm all for (quality) proprietry software on Linux, especially in spaces with no FOSS counterparts of equal quality (eg games), so long as it is not part of the core stack.

Comment

Splitting a binary blob into three binary "plugins" is like rearranging the decks on the Titanic. The fact that Intel is using PowerVR for their next-gen chipsets shows they're not serious about open source software. Else they would have used something that they could open source, like their in-house chipsets.

I hope the three-blobbed DRM gets rejected from the kernel, again.

Comment

At this point my very expensive Panasonic CF-U1 Menlow MID is a BRICK because I don't have time to sort all this crap out. I'm pissed at Intel because I thought their name on the video chip meant it would Just Work under Linux. At this point, I will settle for distro's (Fedora in my case) shipping with any open source driver that can set the damn screen resolution right, and let me run a web browser and my desktop. If I tolerated closed source crap, I would just stick Vista back on the thing.

Comment

I guess this goes to show that being "open" and "free" are not top priorities for any company, not even Intel, and everything they do is just for PR. This seemed promising in the beginning, yet after the details settled it's sad, sad, sad (once for each binary blob that is needed for the "open" part to function)... There must certainly be a lot of high-quality intellectual "property" being protected here -- nVidia and ATI must be shaking at the thought of the awesome PowerVR chip, and probably spending millions to find it's well-guarded secrets :-/

I hope they have the decency to not even try again. They should admit the fact that it's a blob and deal with it clearly like nVidia does, don't try to make it seem open when it obviously isn't.

Seeing this only makes my respect and admiration for AMD and what they did to grow each day (that coming from someone who's not using any of their products atm). Yes, they're in it for the PR as well, but at least they clearly state what is open, what is closed, what could be opened in the future and so on. This whole Poulsbo mess is unbecoming for a company like Intel.

Comment

Intel has always intended to release open-source drivers for this chipset; they've been working behind closed doors for months upon months trying to get Imagination to release docs. The Poulsbo situation may be several heaping gobs of shit, but Intel's been working hard to increase the documented-code-to-shit ratio. Blaming them for this shit is taking a simple and untrue view of the situation.

Comment

Intel has always intended to release open-source drivers for this chipset; they've been working behind closed doors for months upon months trying to get Imagination to release docs. The Poulsbo situation may be several heaping gobs of shit, but Intel's been working hard to increase the documented-code-to-shit ratio. Blaming them for this shit is taking a simple and untrue view of the situation.

First of all thanks for the insight.

I never heared of a company called Imagination, but if I was in charge of Imagination I would think twice about not listening to a huge customer like Intel because it's not like there will be any other serious customers for that kind of shitty GPU's, ever.

Comment

I don't care much whether my drivers are closed or open. I just want them to be solid.

Interestingly, in that regard, I think that if all drivers were closed, the kernel developers would be forced to keep stable ABI and APIs. That in turn would mean that I wouldn't have to pray for everything to work as well as before whenever I have to upgrade to a new distro version. It would also mean that the drivers are developed by the same entity that made the hardware in the first place and not some random guy from another organization.